BECOMING A COMMUNITY ORGANISM

I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe. R. Buckminster Fuller (1970)

During many plant medicine journeys, I fell into the pits of hell. I saw war, famine, torture and anguish as if I was in it. I felt it so deeply that I would be in agony, howling in despair for hours. The plant was showing me the pain of the world as being in me.

Has colonization made us so numb that we cannot, in normal times, feel the pain of a world where millions live in poverty, oppression and hunger? Where species, who have supported us for million of years, are disappearing everyday. Is the food we eat, water we drink and life we live preventing us from feeling and thus acting accordingly? Have we become that mechanized and insensitive?

With our environment toxified by chemical, religious, electromagnetic, radioactive, light pixels and other negative influences, how do we individually and collectively act as white blood cells in a sick and deeply out-of-balance system?

How do we decolonize and rewild ourselves, purifying and transforming the toxicity brought about by dogma, and a mind control education that pushes us to become obedient workers to feed a ruling class’ addiction to control, power and greed.

How do we drink and transform the pus of the world? How do we embrace the pain and oppression of the world as our own?

For many of us, is our longing for community a natural biological impulse to evolve into being an organism? Becoming a part of a whole, with a specific function in the body of the Earth.

Indigenous people, the ones who resisted or escaped colonization (if that’s possible given the might of the the industrial-religious machine!) do not view themselves as separate from their environment. Indigenous people having lived on their ancestors’ land are in on-going communication with their ancestors. They dance in community with the spirit of their ancestors.

Uprooting people from their ancestral land, which war, genocide, private ownership, speculation and imminent domain have done, is a sure way to break a people’s connection with, not only a sense of place, but with its sense of purpose - taking care of the land that has been their ancestors’ home and has sustained them for hundreds and thousands of years.

Without a sense of place and a sense of belonging, we cannot properly function as humans. We no longer feel part of a larger system that we are born from and die into. We do not have a true sense of purpose. We become colonized.
Our longing for community is a natural impulse, a whisper, or sometimes a screaming from the depth of our DNA, our collective memory, our tribal roots, our animal roots.

Trusting that impulse is key to transforming the human world into a new organism where every part is essential and aimed at the same goal-maintaining health and balance in the system.

Where do we now begin, if we are to follow natural impulses and restore balance on Earth, “repairing the World”, as the Hopi say.

Creativity in its pure form IS the voice of the Earth. We need to learn how to listen to our innermost feelings and dreams, and trust these impulses emanating from the heart of the Planet.

We are creatures of the Earth. Our mind, stewed for years in a colonized world, makes us believe that we are separate from that larger body-the Planet, our Mother.

If our heart aches these days, it’s because we are feeling. That means we can also feel the life that it’s possible to create when we extract ourselves from the machine and relearn how to be human again.

We’ve all experienced some degree of community, a feeling of belonging to a larger organism. We feel it in sacred union with someone, with family, a team or in an ecstatic dance. Or while visiting a forest, or swimming with a pod of dolphins.

In these moments, we operate more as an organism, however short-lived. We feed the organism and are fed by it. When that organism is clear about its function, it performs at a higher frequency. That energy heals, inspires and invigorates the cells of the organism.

The threatening circumstances of our damaged natural habitat are activating biological processes in us. Some will become sick (physically, emotionally and spiritually), processing toxicity accumulated through centuries of oppression/genocide/rapes/lies/mind control and pollution of all sorts.

The system of the Earth, in its infinitely perfect design, is equipped to heal.

The pus of the Earth must be understood and transformed.

Community with humans and non-humans is the phenomena that will carry us to a whole new level of existence. We don’t know how human will evolve. We don’t know what’s contained in our DNA.

A Hopi elder said: ”There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt. The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration”.

We have to trust that we can evolve, that we are in it together and that those of us alive in these times are equipped to live and assist in this new birth. Like a birth it can be glorious, messy and terrifying. We are future human beings and doulas all at once.

We are in a chaotic phase of metamorphosis where we are internally dying and being reborn at the same time. The ego must trust that we are all in this together and are all activated by the dire state of the world. The energy pulsing from deep within the Earth, is propelling us into an evolutionary leap to ensure humanity will survive, even if it’s just for a little bit longer.

We are in the process of healing the Planet. We are helping heal the toxicity of the Planet. The process, however painful is helping bring balance to the system. We need to feel part of the WE of humanity.

We need to embrace it all. Without doing that, we cannot heal. We must attune to the greater body of the Earth, to help detoxify the biosphere, while also drawing upon the Earth’s evolutionary vitality to fuel our sacred walk.

This is the new medicine we need to embrace. “Walk in beauty” they say. Alright, what do we have to lose anyway?

May the New Year be magical like a forest, full of interesting creatures and wonder.

May we feel at home there, in our own heart, free like all beings should be.

 

 

 

 

Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust is a 501(c)3     

Donations of cash, stocks, vehicles or material goods are tax-deductible  

 

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REPOPULATING FARMLAND

Designing the New Agrarian Settlements

 

Fourteen years ago, while driving on a west coast freeway, I had a vision so vivid that I overshot my destination by 17 miles.  In my mind, I saw people arriving on farmland devastated by chemical-based agriculture, pouring out of colorful semi-trucks – vigorous young people, children and elders, too. They all were highly organized, and well-supplied.

Some trucks were set up for cooking, others for carpentry. Already, the group had erected mess halls, bunkhouses, shops and bathrooms to accommodate large numbers of people.  And crews were working the land, using technologies to remediate polluted and sterile soil to grow organic food. They were an Earth Restoration Corps.

At the time, I was deeply involved in running a community dance project in several cities, so I put the vision on the back burner of my creative kitchen.  A few years later, though, I had the space to bring it forward, and I began to dig into the challenges of creating a sustainable culture, including the critical need for healthy soil. Soon, I was growing my first home garden, then came a community garden in San Pancho, Mexico, and finally the creation of Gaia Gardens, a large urban farm in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

From those experiences a larger vision emerged. A year and a half ago, the Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust, a nonprofit created during the Gaia Gardens experience, purchased 32 acres of irrigated land 30 miles south of Las Vegas, NM, along the Pecos River.  Mil Abrazos’ mission is to create a new agrarian settlement that will be a farm with affordable housing, a school for learning life skills, and a demonstration center for deploying appropriate technologies in the modern world. Beyond this, it will be a place of practice for cooperative living, for the young and the old and everyone in between.

I am already hard at work constructing the foundation of this settlement. I have been building a basecamp, and begun reaching out to both the local community and the larger Northern New Mexico area, to start a conversation about how to create an agrarian settlement that can inspire and support a rejuvenation of our farmland.
When driving through our region, be it Mora, Abiquiú, Chama, Villanueva, Ribera, Penasco, Anton Chico and many other irrigated areas, you can’t help but notice how little “agriculture” is left.  Most of what people call agriculture in the region consists of growing hay and grazing a few cattle on irrigated pasture or on public land, both of which can harm the land unless done with a holistic approach.

It was not always this way. Until World War II, these areas were the breadbaskets of the region, growing an abundance of diverse foods. But the cheap price of oil after the war made it possible to import food from far away places, food usually grown on large commercial farms powered by underpaid and abused immigrant labor from south of the border. Young people did not stay on the family farms, and were drawn to the new jobs offered at Los Alamos, Sandia Labs, Kirtland Air Force Base and other urban areas.   With good salaries, they could afford to buy cheap food grown elsewhere.

The people who stayed on the land resorted to grazing cattle for a living, which doesn’t require nearly as much labor as growing vegetables, fruits and grains. With able bodies deserting the family farms, rural food stores disappeared and fresh food was no longer available as it had always been.  People’s health started to decline.  With poor health, poverty crept in and more farmlands were abandoned.

Today, in New Mexico, over 90% of the food we consume is imported, while thousands of acres of fertile and irrigated land is either left fallow, or is used for growing alfalfa and grazing cattle.\

This dismal situation is actually a golden opportunity for a new generation of rural settlers. The older generation needs help maintaining ditches to keep the irrigated lands alive and to protect their water rights from the State, which is always looking to supply urban and suburban expansion. They also need new ideas for using the land beyond hay and cattle grazing. Many modern city dwellers, on the other hand, hunger for a simpler lifestyle, and for connecting once again with the land.

But bringing these two populations together is not easy. As much as people say they would prefer to live in a rural community, raise their children in a farm setting, and spend their elder years in Nature, there are many obstacles that keep them from their dreams: The price of land is high, and though we might imagine the bucolic village life, the truth is that it requires patience, skills and courage. And the families that have lived for generations on the land are not always welcoming to outsiders who come in with new ideas or who lack an understanding of the cultural context.

So where do we start?  How do we move from the when-I-win-the-lottery or when-I-retire fantasy, and begin a journey towards a different life for ourselves and future generations.

We can look at history. There’s been a multitude of communal experiments in which people have left the city in search of a more satisfying life. In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were the intentional communities started by hippies, back-to-the-landers movement, and the kibbutz experiments in Israel. But you can go back much further to the 1880’s in Germany, when a young and educated generation left cities polluted by the coal-powered industrial revolution and resettled in the country, launching what we know today as the alternative health movement.

And there is Cuba. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba lost all its subsidies-imported oil, fertilizers, tractor parts and imported food, overnight.  They recalled the old timers who knew how to farm with draft horses.  They went organic.  They cultivated every empty city lot.  The average Cuban lost 30lbs.  Cuba is now one of the most sustainable countries in the World, despite a 60-year U.S. embargo.

How do we draw from the successes and failures of all these experiments, to design a new form of existence where simplicity, sharing, caring and cherishing Nature are the tenets of our lives. That’s what I have been contemplating over the past 18 months as I have planted windbreaks, built basic housing and workshop space, and become more attuned to the land and community along the Pecos River that has lived in this region for generations.

For me I see an obvious link between the need to reclaim and restore farmland for food security, and the creation of new agrarian settlements.  They go hand in hand.   Farming must return to a community model.  Agricultural land must be reclaimed into the commons.

I also see that it must be done in collaboration with the elders who are still living in these remote agricultural areas; they hold a wealth of knowledge, as I have learned as a member of my local acequia.  We need to capture the story of their generation, learn about the food they grew, and the grain surplus that was milled all over the region when most of the food grown was for human consumption.

Much like those well-organized farmer-settlers I saw in a vision 14 years ago, I am eager to collaborate with people who are ready to tackle the challenge of revitalizing our rural areas while rising to the bigger ecological, social and economic challenges of our times. Together, I believe we can prepare for what looks like a difficult period of massive climate change; we can harness our collective resources, ingenuity and wisdom to create food security for our region; we can start innovative cottage industries that can co-exist with small agriculture and provide a resilient economic base to the rural communities of the future; we can help young people re-populate farmland, raise their family on the land and live a good life; and we can all learn how to work together with fair-minded practices of governance and love.

I know we can do it.  Now is the time to engage a deeper part of ourselves, to radically broaden our imagination, rediscover our humanness and create new models of sustainable existence.

We must bring people back to the land to care for the land that feeds us. These ancient breadbaskets in our backyard are where civilization will survive.

As much as the ecological predicaments we have created can seem insurmountable, we can also look at the task ahead as a sacred mission to rebuild our beautiful World.

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Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust is a 501(c)3     

Donations of cash, stocks, vehicles or material goods are tax-deductible  

 

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 Fundraising Campaign Launched to Finish Basecamp

After a year and a half of construction and land work, building a caretaker’s unit, public bathroom, shop and bunkhouse, we have erected a steel frame addition that will add 2,200sq.ft. to the existing structure, and will feature a dining hall for 30 people, camp kitchen, ADA-compliant bathroom, office and lodging for visitors and interns.

We are now seeking to raise $50,000 to finish the building.

Once the basecamp is completed, we'll be engaging the community's creativity to wisely design this settlement through a series of facilitated gatherings (see program here).

Ultimately, it will be a farm with affordable housing, school for life skills, demonstration center for appropriate technologies and place of practice for cooperative lifestyle. The education of the youth, as well as aging and eldercare, will be carefully considered in the design of this settlement. 

Click on image to visit our campaign campaign and read more about building plans, budget, etc.

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Designing a New Agrarian Settlement

 

 

 

 

 

Last week, I worked with members of our 12-mile long irrigation ditch, inspecting a concrete siphon that moves water along a cliff. Large falling rocks have weakened the structure and we were assessing for repairs before we reopen the ditch in May.

After the inspection, I walked a 3-mile section of the ditch checking for obstructions from trees knocked down by the recent storms. Along the way, I ran into Oscar, David and Nick, all small farmers in their 60’s, born and raised in the area. They were taking measurements for the repair of a Desague (relief gate). Nick turned to me and said: “that’s it, after we’re gone, there’s nobody to do this. The young people are all gone. They all want to be in the city getting big salaries. You can’t make money farming anymore.”
 

This summarizes where small family agriculture has gone in our region, and why so many rural communities have fallen into disrepair, with old folks still holding on to land but getting too old to farm. Growing hay and raising a few cattle is all they can do. A lot of hay grown in New Mexico is shipped to dairy farms in Texas. According to the New Mexico Department of Agriculture 98% of New Mexico’s cattle are sent out of state for processing and 97% of our agricultural products leave the state, but the state in turn imports more than $4 billion in food products annually. 

Mil Abrazos' interest, and that of many people in New Mexico, is to reclaim farmland for local food production, revitalize rural communities, inspire and support young people to return to the land and develop a resilient food system.

For those of you interested in how to participate in the next steps of the Mil Abrazos project, take a look at the topics that will be explored to design this project. MASTER PLAN DESIGN FOR A NEW AGRARIAN SETTLEMENT. 

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Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust is a 501(c)3     

Donations of cash, stocks, vehicles or material goods are tax-deductible  

 

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